State of Australian cities 2014-2015: progress in Australian regions

Provides insight into the vital role that Australian cities play in the growth of the countries economy and tracks the overall progress made in Australia\u27s major centres. Summary Since 2010, the State of Australian Cities reports have examined the progress being made in our major cities. These reports have provided insight into the vital role that Australian cities play in the growth of our economy and have tracked the overall progress made in Australia\u27s major centres. The State of Australian Cities 2014–2015 once again looks at the drivers behind some of the public policy issues facing the country today and into the future. Australia is a highly urbanised country. The populations of Australia\u27s major cities are at record levels, as is the number of people employed. It is in our cities that the overwhelming majority of jobs are located and where the most new jobs are being created. The economic output of our major cities has grown and their national importance remains extremely high. However, alongside that growth there is more demand on transport systems in Australia than ever before. This report examines population growth, economic growth and the increased traffic flows through our ports and airports and on our roads and rail lines. Issues of space and the potential conflicts of the usability of cities with the utility and long term capacity of freight hubs, ports and airports and the movement of goods and people in cities is a challenge for policy makers. This report provides the evidence base for policy makers at all levels of government to consider those challenges now and into the future

Desire, dryness and decadence: living big in Australia\u27s suburbs

There are (at least!) two remarkable things about Australia: one is that it is the driest inhabited continent on the planet and the second that it has the largest houses in the world. The relationship between these two facts serves as one way of understanding its settlement patterns and the character of its suburbs, foregrounding the desires that underpin their cultural economies

Are We Closer to International Consensus on the Term ‘Food Literacy’?: A Systematic Scoping Review of Its Use in the Academic Literature (1998–2019)

(1) Background: The term ‘food literacy’ has gained momentum globally; however, a lack of clarity around its definition has resulted in inconsistencies in use of the term. Therefore, the objective was to conduct a systematic scoping review to describe the use, reach, application and definitions of the term ‘food literacy’ over time. (2) Methods: A search was conducted using the PRISMA-ScR guidelines in seven research databases without any date limitations up to 31 December 2019, searching simply for use of the term ‘food literacy’. (3) Results: Five hundred and forty-nine studies were included. The term ‘food literacy’ was used once in 243 articles (44%) and mentioned by researchers working in 41 countries. Original research was the most common article type (n = 429, 78%). Food literacy was published across 72 In Cites disciplines, with 456 (83%) articles from the last 5 years. In articles about food literacy (n = 82, 15%), review articles were twice as prevalent compared to the total number of articles (n = 10, 12% vs. n = 32, 6%). Fifty-one different definitions of food literacy were cited. (4) Conclusions: ‘Food literacy’ has been used frequently and broadly across differing article types and disciplines in academic literature internationally. However, agreement on a standardised definition of food literacy endorsed by a peak international agency is needed in order to progress the field

Classifying and systemising uncertainty and instability : a dynamic social network approach to risk

The narrow and probabilistic, ergodic approach to risk, to date, has potentially not fully understood or incorporated the dynamical synthetic ecology in which our systems actually operate. A dynamic synthetic ecology made even more complex and potentially uncertain and unstable through the degrees of socio-info/techno connectivity we now enjoy compared to 30 years ago. This means our decisions and solutions are often deeply entangled in ways that it is almost impossible to measure. Yet Risk Management continues to call for measured certainty based upon a potentially increasingly narrow and frozen understanding of Risk – usually ‘taken’ at the unit / operational but not the systems level. In this paper, we look at uncertainty and instability as being connected but not necessarily synonymous indicators of risk. In terms of instability, we look to classify different types of instability that a system may face including, for example, technical risks introduced through disruptive technologies

Are We Closer to International Consensus on the Term 'Food Literacy'? A Systematic Scoping Review of Its Use in the Academic Literature (1998-2019).

(1) Background: The term 'food literacy' has gained momentum globally; however, a lack of clarity around its definition has resulted in inconsistencies in use of the term. Therefore, the objective was to conduct a systematic scoping review to describe the use, reach, application and definitions of the term 'food literacy' over time. (2) Methods: A search was conducted using the PRISMA-ScR guidelines in seven research databases without any date limitations up to 31 December 2019, searching simply for use of the term 'food literacy'. (3) Results: Five hundred and forty-nine studies were included. The term 'food literacy' was used once in 243 articles (44%) and mentioned by researchers working in 41 countries. Original research was the most common article type (n = 429, 78%). Food literacy was published across 72 In Cites disciplines, with 456 (83%) articles from the last 5 years. In articles about food literacy (n = 82, 15%), review articles were twice as prevalent compared to the total number of articles (n = 10, 12% vs. n = 32, 6%). Fifty-one different definitions of food literacy were cited. (4) Conclusions: 'Food literacy' has been used frequently and broadly across differing article types and disciplines in academic literature internationally. However, agreement on a standardised definition of food literacy endorsed by a peak international agency is needed in order to progress the field

Building the evidence base for river drowning prevention

Introduction: Rivers account for a significant proportion of the global burden of drowning. Rivers are the leading location for unintentional fatal drowning in Australia. Through a public health approach, this research provides a framework to develop a detailed understanding (epidemiology, risk factors and strategies for the prevention) of unintentional fatal river drowning in Australia. Methods: A mixed methods approach was used including: a systematic literature review; epidemiological analysis of a 10‐year total population case‐series and review of coronial recommendations; a CATI survey, community surveys, breathalysing and direct observation; and a modified Delphi process to develop prevention strategies. Results: Males (80%), adults (85%), alcohol (41%) and increasing geographical remoteness (very remote 29 times [RR= 28.8] the risk of drowning compared to major city residents) are key risk factors for river drowning. Similar numbers of males and females visit rivers, often for different activities with river visitations more likely in the afternoon, on hot days, weekends and public holidays. Adjusting for exposure, older males (75+ years) had the greatest relative risk (RR= 1.12). Blood alcohol concentrations ≥0.05% were seen among both males and females with alcohol consumption at rivers more prevalent in the afternoon and early evening. Eight percent of river drowning cases generated coronial recommendations. Prevention strategies considered more likely to be effective included: avoiding alcohol; flood‐related early warning systems; child supervision; learning to swim; lifejackets; and community‐wide rescue and resuscitation skills. Discussion: Preventing river drowning presents is a wicked problem, where usage of such locations is encouraged, often accompanied with alcohol consumption and a lack of on‐site rescue services. Enacting legislation and subsequent enforcement are challenging due to mixed use, geographical dispersal and isolation. River drowning attracts an estimated economic burden of $318.70 million dollars per annum. Further investment in the development, implementation and evaluation of evidence‐based drowning prevention interventions is warranted. Strategies such as community wide rescue and resuscitation skills, especially in remote locations, must be considered. Conclusion: This research, the first to specifically explore river drowning in the world, highlights the value of taking a public health approach. By building a broad evidence base of the causal factors increasing river drowning risk, the likelihood of prevention strategies being effective is enhanced. Research findings were used in the development of the 'Respect the River' and 'Don't Let Your Mates Drink and Drown' drowning prevention programs, in partnership with Royal Life Saving Society – Australia, which have contributed to an 18% reduction in river drowning to date

An Application Of Services Based Modelling Paradigm To The Hydrologic Domain Using Ewater Source

The traditional paradigm for the deployment of hydrological models involves the capturing and testing of model concepts and numerical consistency for robustness and accuracy, which is then distributed as binary files with or without source code. The model software is then populated with data and parameters and run locally within the modeller’s organisation, often on their own desktop. This modelling workflow is used by many organisations; however, there are several limitations and potential issues. Once the software is outside the developer’s organisation they rely on the modeller to apply updates and bug fixes in a timely manner, and to correctly describe the model version used for reporting. The developer also loses control of the quality and suitability of the input data for a particular application of the model. With more prevalent access to high bandwidth internet and flexible computing infrastructure there is an increased opportunity to better control model access through the exposure of modelling functionality through web services. As well as giving the developer tighter control over model versioning and IP, it also allows closer coupling of the model to both data sources and computational resources, which is especially beneficial to multi-run use cases such as uncertainty analysis and calibration, where the ability to easily scale to many model instances is of most value. The eWater Source modelling system is an important use case for Australia’s hydrologic community, and provides a rich array of functionality. Source is especially suited to the services modelling paradigm as it has project load times much greater than simulation runtimes, the services based approach allows the hiding of these load times by keeping the project in memory for each instance of a Source Server. This paper investigates the use of a Source service interface for providing hydrological modelling web services

Epidemiology

Epidemiology is a methodological, well grounded and versatile tool-kit to conduct evidence-based quantitative research in all health sciences. It integrates a wide spectrum of case studies and examples from the different disciplines thereby fostering the multi-disciplinary approach in the health sciences. It follows a two level 'methods based' approach differentiating between "basic" knowledge that all students of epidemiology should be familiar with and "beyond the basics" information for the interested or more advanced reader